Mike's Temperature Converter

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December 4, 2009
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Politically Correct Seasonal Holiday Greeting

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

PLUS

A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual orientation of the wishee.

Disclaimer:
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher who assumes no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.

November 26, 2009
A weekend wasted isn't a wasted weekend.

It was Carol's birthday and we took a break in Maine again, this time in Boothbay Harbor.  Neither of us had been there before.  It was out of season and many of the stores were closed and there were not too many people around.  Apparently, the place is wall to wall people in the summer and it is difficult to move around and park.  It was all very pleasant and peaceful, and the weather was unseasonably warm for the time of year.  We picked the perfect time to visit.  It was great.  I took some photos.

We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast overlooking the harbor:

This ship was having some work done on it:

   This is where we stayed - a great place.

At the end of the year, many of the stores try to offload their merchandise on a curiosity known as Pajama Day (I think Pajamarama would be a good name for it).  Even stores that were closed reopened for the event.  On that day, starting at 6:00 am, the stores offer substantial discounts to anyone wearing pajamas.  As the day progresses, the discounts become less and less.  And so it was that bright and early on a Saturday morning the streets were filled with people wandering around in their PJs and dressing gowns.

      It appears that people sleep in Santa Clause hats too.  I also spotted someone wearing reindeer antlers but didn't get a shot of that.  Maybe that's why these creatures are smiling:

This is a place a little further along the coast:

Some sculptures at the Botanical Gardens:

The band is Jehovah Stover and the Holy Mackerels, playing in a restaurant called McSeagulls. Both the restaurant and the band were very good.  Carol asked them if they knew any Rolling Stones songs and they played Miss You, which was pretty good, especially considering they had a fiddle in their lineup:

Definitely a place to visit again.

October 26, 2009
Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional.

Me and Carol are both Pink Floyd fans and we went to see the Australian Pink Floyd tribute band last night and they were absolutely incredible.

The music was so powerful, they are so talented and they sounded just like Pink Floyd (by no means an easy task), even down to the "wailing women", who got their own standing ovation for their performance.  They have two lead guitarists and they are both brilliant.  I wish I could play like that.

Interestingly, their Australian accents were not too far removed from the real Floyd's British accents.  To my ears anyway — I find it increasingly more difficult these days to differentiate between the two.  The Roger Waters guy sounded very like the original.  But it was the musicianship that excelled.

The band deviated more than a little from the original arrangement on Brick in the Wall and — dare I say it — they sounded even better than Pink Floyd!  They were that good!  The entire performance was pretty amazing.  It was even worth the $20 the opportunistic bastards at the parking garage stiffed me.

They tour all over the world and I highly recommend going to see them if you get the chance.  I will be back the next time they come around.  These not-so-good photos are from my cell phone.

September 22, 2009
It's amazing how grandparents seem so young once you become one.

And then there were three — grandchildren that is.  It must be something in the water.

Meet Julie Elisabeth Stanley, born to proud parents Carl and Stacy.  Vital statistics:

•  Arrived September 20, 2009 at 2:12 am

•  8 lbs 15 oz

•  21 inches

August 17, 2009
The trouble with life is there's no background music.

Meet Jack, my second grandchild.

Weighing in at 7 lbs 2 ounces and 21 inches, Jackson Layne Benedict was born to proud parents Sarah and Karl on August 3rd, 2009 at 1:48 pm.  (Not to be confused with Carl and Stacy — their baby is due next month.)

Everyone is well, although not getting too much sleep.  It seems that Jack is nocturnal and when baby is awake, everyone is awake.

Dad Karl and big brother Dylan.

Dylan, Jack & me.

A little souvenir for the future.

August 4, 2009
I perform all my own stunts.

Do they have baby showers in the UK these days?  I don’t remember them when I lived there.

Over here, a baby shower is a popular way to celebrate the future birth of a child (usually the firstborn) and parents receive gifts for their baby. The party is intended to help parents get items that they need for their baby, such as baby clothes.

Usually it a women-only event but Carl and Stacy had one that included men.  It was also a barbeque.  I took some photos.

We took a break a couple of weeks ago and went to Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont for a few days.  It is very pleasant up there and it was good to relax for a while.

The actual Notch is a narrow, winding mountain pass between some large rocks.

This is Marko the Magician.  He entertained the kids and parents in the afternoon with a magic show and the adults later in the evening as a hypnotist.  He was very funny both times.

Carol managed to get me on a horse again and we went for a trail ride.

We also spent a few hours kayaking down the river again.  First time out this year.  Getting in the thing is the hardest part.

Of course, you cannot go to that part of Vermont without visiting the Ben & Jerry’s factory.  That's me enjoying a Cherry Garcia.

This is the hill where all the failed flavors are buried.

12:34:56  7/8/9
Anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.

Q: Name three birds beginning with the letter 'N'.
A: A nowl, a neagle and a nawk.

I arrived home late, tired after a three-hour drive following a weeklong business trip, and was dragging my sorry butt and my cases into the house when I became aware of some noise and movement on the porch.  I looked to see what it was and couldn't believe my eyes — there was a hawk in there!  A hawk!

What made it so weird is that the porch is entirely enclosed.  It is covered with a bug screen and all the doors were locked.  There was no possible way that it could have got in.  But there it was.

It was a beautiful bird.  It looked young and very tired from trying to get out.  Who knows how long it had been there.

I called Carol, who was already en route to my house with Tasha.  She was in an area with bad reception, which is just about everywhere in and around New Boston.  "What? A hock?" (That's how they say it here) "Where?"  Then my phone did something it had never done before.  The phone cut off, the screen went white, except for a little clock thing spinning in the center of the screen, and none of the buttons would work.  I could not even switch off the phone.

This was becoming like one of those bizarre Italian movies I used to watch way back in the '60s.

Then my phone decided to work again, Carol arrived and we took the photos you see here.  I opened the door so the bird could escape but it did not budge.  Carol got a broom handle and placed it in front of the bird and it just stepped onto it.  She carried the bird on the stick out through the door (missed that photo) and it flew off.

We took a good look around and found a rip in the screen above one of the doors.  That must have been how it got in.  Bear in mind that the screen is made of metal and not cloth and that the bird was unable to break out again.  It must have hit the screen at quite a force to smash through it like that.  The door does look a little banged up.

I hope the "hock" is OK.

So now you know what our company name means and why we think it is a potent one.  But coming up with that name was hard work.  We knew what we wanted the name to achieve but just could not find exactly the right combination of words.

Sometime last December we set a goal of naming the company by the end of the year.  And so it was that in the waning hours of 2008 — creativity possibly fueled by some celebratory bubbly — that we found the name.

We toasted the new year and the new company name, and in the early hours of January 1st 2009, we registered the domain name.

It seems such a simple name, almost obvious to us now, but getting there was tough.  That same process manifested itself over and over again as we developed the website, brochures, business cards, newspaper ads, press releases and an amazingly high number of administrative forms and booklets.  We are trying to do everything right and it required a lot of research — how did we ever manage without the Internet?  Google has been our best friend but it has been very time-consuming.

"Finding" the logo also took a long time — much too long in retrospect — but we needed it for all the forms we had to submit to the State.  If we had to do it over, we would have submitted all the documentation without the logo and would probably have had our business license at least a month earlier.  But we didn't.  Put that down to lessons learned.

Nevertheless, I find it interesting now to look back on the evolution of our many attempts at a logo and at just how many of them there were.  Here are our other attempts (my favorites were the first three you see here and Carol's was the Pegasus but our survey subjects were not partial to any of them):

Q: What's the name of our company?  :)

July 1, 2009
Don't squat with your spurs on.

It was Carl's birthday — and not just any birthday.  This was the big three-oh!

Omygod!  As traumatic as it may have been for him, it was equally a source of reflection for me.

I can remember, like it was yesterday, thinking that 30 was sooo old, and now I have a 30 year old son!  And what's even more profound is that I am almost twice that age!  Wow, where did all that time go?

We went out for a meal to celebrate this momentous occasion with family and friends.  This is the present I got for him.  It is a metal sculpture made from nuts and bolts and other assorted hardware of a guy smashing his computer.  I can relate.  We are both in the computer field and I thought it was cool and something I would like.

Shhh...  Do I detect the pitter-patter of tiny feet?  Don't tell anyone that I told you but there is a rumor going around that I am going to be a granddad again.  Carl and Stacy expecting in September.  Stay tuned...

I am pleased to see that Craig has been keeping an online journal of his adventures on the Great American Road Trip. I gave him a camera for a graduation present and he has been putting it to good use — he has posted some really great photos.

If you have not seen his blog yet, click on the following link and check it out: http://craig-stanley.blogspot.com/

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Tasha has also been on an adventure — down on Carol’s horse farm. I have been spending quite a long time away from home on business these past few weeks.  The only good news out of being stuck in a hotel in Connecticut is that I have finally found the time to update this blog.

During that time, Carol has been looking after Tasha for me. Tasha loves it there with Carol’s two dogs and all the horses.  She has become a farm dog.

Her favorite pastime, which was shown to her by Little Boy (a Jack Russell terrier), is to jump and splash in a pond to make the frogs shriek and jump. There is also much mud in and around the pond, which she also enjoys enormously. She is pictured here lying in it.

She needed, and received, a bath after that only to go and do it all over again.

So what does our company name mean?  (The name that I am not going to say but is shown here in the logo on the left.)  We wanted the type of business to be part of the name so that accounts for the second word. But what of the first word?

“The name”, often appended with the word “Valley” is a geographic region that is well known to residents of the area.  It gives us both a local connection and also implies a certain size to the company.  Right now, we only aspire to be that size but we believe it creates the right impression.

Another aspect is that there are other related, well established and well respected organizations that also use “the name”.  It's a very powerful name and we just kind of slip right in there with them.  Our company name is “recognizable” and easily remembered by people.  We already have one client who liked the name and chose us in part because of it.

Another neat thing is that it shows up great in the search engines when folks are looking for these services in the aforementioned geographic region, especially if they include MA or Massachusetts in the keywords.

We were very pleasantly surprised to find that no one else had claimed either the company name or the website domain.

June 15, 2009
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.

I guess the time has come to reveal what our business is all about.

It’s … it’s … it’s a home care agency!  This is our logo on the right.  There, so now you know.  ‘Bye!

Oh, alright, I will give you some more info...

What exactly is a home care agency you say to yourself?  Well, for starters, it is nothing to do with taking care of homes.  It is everything to do with providing in-home, non-medical, personal care to the elderly, disabled and those recovering from illness or surgery.  I did not lie when I told you it was an ambitious project.

Have no fear, you can rest assured that neither of us will actually provide the personal care ourselves.  We employ people who are trained and have a talent for that line of work.  Our role is to find the right people in the right places at the right time when someone is in need of their services.  And that task is not without its challenges.

Here's a little about the environment in which we are launching this venture.

We expect that most of our clients will be the elderly.  The good news is that advances in medical care are allowing people to live longer.  The flipside of the coin is that as we age many of us will suffer from a physical or mental condition that will limit our ability to perform everyday tasks.  In fact, one sobering report I read claimed that MOST of us will experience some form of impairment in our later years.  Yikes, say it ain’t so!

The elderly are the fastest growing segment of the population at the moment and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.  As the elderly population increases, so does the need for services that offer them assistance.  This trend will be exacerbated in no small measure by the baby boomers.

The baby boomer generation is a term used to describe those who were born during the post-World War II baby boom between 1946 and 1964.  The oldest of the boomers are only in their early sixties and the youngest are still in their forties.  One boomer turns 50 every 18 seconds.  Another turns 60 every 7 seconds.  Including me, the baby boomers are 78 million strong!

"Talkin’ ’bout My Generation"

The baby boom has been likened to a pig in a python.  The idea is that the boomers are a demographic bulge that is remodeling society as it passes through it by the sheer weight of its numbers.

First, they put pressure on hospital maternity units when they were born.  Then they overflowed the public school system, leading to record construction, overcrowded classrooms, and sometimes double shifts of classes.  They gave a huge boost to college enrollment, and they created an "echo boom" of births when they reached child-bearing ages.    Now they are getting older and are starting to trickle into the burgeoning seniors boom.

I think that in about 10 to 20 years that trickle will become a raging torrent that could well be a crisis in the making when eldercare services are stretched beyond capacity.  Perhaps tsunami would be a more appropriate metaphor.

No, we don't plan to be in the business in 20 years but I think this trend is to the advantage of both our short and long-term goals.  (Unless, of course, we happen to need those services ourselves!)

 There is also a movement afoot to shift certain types of care away from expensive hospitals and nursing homes and into the patients’ own homes, which is a far more cost-effective solution.

The average annual cost of a private room in a nursing home in Massachusetts is $107,310 right now (much more in Boston).  Ten years from now that same room is projected to cost $174,797!  In-home care services are a fraction of the cost.  I also believe that most people would prefer the comfort and familiar surroundings of their own homes to a room in a facility.

The burden of care giving in the home usually falls on family members.  This includes those looking after elderly parents, who often have to take care of their own children as well as work for a living (the so-called "sandwich" generation).  This is where we come in by providing those care giving services.  The personal homecare services are as much of a benefit to the family members as they are to the patients themselves.

Phew! That's a lot of heavy stuff (man) and is probably quite enough for one day.

One other thing, when people search for our services, I do not want this blog to appear in the search results so I will not make any direct reference to the company name or provide a link to the website.  Instead, I will post images containing the relevant information.  This is the website address (clicking on it won’t work; you will have to type it in):

We are an actual corporation and the name of the company is shown in the logo above. The first part of the name might look a little strange; however, there is method to the madness.  I will tell you about it next time.

June 9, 2009
You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going,
because you might not get there.

School's out for summer...and Craig has taken off with his friend Emily on the Great American Road Trip!  The trip sounds pretty good — except that I would have allowed about twice the time.  Still, it is a great adventure and something I would have liked to have done at his age.

Come to think about it, I might still do it one day but without that camping thing — I like my creature comforts.

I have encouraged him to create a blog — an online journal — of his trip so that friends and family can follow his journey and see what he is up to.  I don't know if he will do it but he has made the first step and created a blog.  I hope he maintains it and posts lots of photos.

To find out more about Craig and Emily's Excellent Adventure go to this address:

http://craig-stanley.blogspot.com.
 

June 1, 2009
Latine loqui coactus sum.

June already!  Time flies whether you're having fun or not.

We have been so wrapped up in our business venture that I have barely had a chance to update this blog.  There has been so much to do in the planning and preparation that it has consumed most of our free time.  But there have been some positive developments in the short time since we got our license so maybe all the hard work is starting to pay off.

I have deliberately refrained from saying too much about the business here because I did not want to jinx it.

Now that we are out there in the public eye I can reveal what we are up to.  No time right now though so I will have to keep you in suspenders and tell you all about it next time. :)

In the meantime, Craig graduated from college!  Congratulations to him — I know that it has been a lot of hard work these past four years.

I went to the graduation ceremony armed with my trusty camera but it let me down.  Even though I charged the battery the day before, it died after taking only the two (not very good) shots shown here.  One charge too many I suppose.

Carl was there and took a lot more photos; I will post some of them here when I get them.

May 10, 2009
An honest answer can get you into a lot of trouble.

Thunderbirds are go!

We got our business license!!!  Finally!  It took three months.  More later...

May 5, 2009
Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

Still waiting for the goddamn business license!!!!!!!   Grrrrr!!!!!!!

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

April 8, 2009
Grass growing from sidewalk cracks never turns brown.

I looked out of my front window and saw at least six deer standing there.  I ran and grabbed my camera but half of them had already taken off.  I just managed to snap this picture before the rest of them ran off too.  The photo didn't come out too good because there is a bug screen on the window but you can just make out three deer.

You can also see the damage to one of my willow trees from the ice storm last year.  I have another willow tree that is in even worse shape and several other trees that need attention.  There is much spring cleaning to do.

Most of the snow has gone now but we still have a few patches left where it was very deep or is in the shade.  The birds are starting to come back and I am getting the feeders and nesting boxes ready.  This to me is the start of the new year, not January.  And it looks like it will be an interesting year too.  After many weeks of silence, there has been a sudden flurry of activity on the business license front!

Before you can get a license, you have to have everything set up and ready to go — office, phone, website, insurance, forms, brochures, bank accounts, payment of state fees, you name it.  It is an expensive proposition with no guarantee of getting the license.  Last week we heard that the application and all the business forms were accepted without any problems.  Then we had an office inspection and that went well too.

Then came the big one.  We had to go for a hearing!  Wearing our best business disguises, we traipsed into Boston yesterday for a somewhat nerve-racking appearance before government officials.  The security at those government buildings is like that at an airport.  We had to put our coats and bags through x-ray machines, walk through metal detectors and then have a manual scan with a wand.  At least we were allowed to keep our shoes on.

Details of the application had been posted in the local newspaper, other local businesses had been notified and objections to the application were requested.  There were no challenges.

We had to swear an oath that we telling the truth and they recorded the hearing.  They interviewed us together and they interviewed us separately with the other having to leave the room.  At the end of the meeting, and after a lot of questions, the hearing officer said that he was going to recommend that we get our license!  Phew!

There shouldn't be any reason now why we would not get the license — but we still have to wait and see.

March 17, 2009
BEER — so much more than a breakfast beverage!

There are many good reasons for drinking,
One has just entered my head.
If a man doesn't drink when he's living,
How in the hell can he drink when he's dead?
 

March came in like the proverbial lion and dumped a foot of snow on New Boston. A week later, it dumped another 8" on us. We have had some relatively mild weather recently and it looks like March may go out like a lamb.  Spring begins on Friday too!

Winter definitely outstayed its welcome (as it usually does). This year could also be considered the Winter of Discontent. The economy has gone down the toilet, companies are going out business, hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs every month, and the housing market and stock market have both collapsed, eroding people's savings. It's a perfect storm that just about guarantees that a great many of us baby boomers have no hope of retirement. People are lucky if they still have a job.

Carol and I have spent the past three months working on Plan B.  What is Plan B you say?  Good question but all cannot be revealed at this point.  Loose lips sink ships and all that stuff.

I can tell you that even as the walls come crashing down all around us, we are trying to start a business! Go figure. It is an ambitious project but one that we believe holds great opportunity. We are currently bogged down in the endless quagmire that is state government. We are playing hurry-up-and-wait with an impenetrable, faceless bureaucratic morass waiting to get our business license. It has been 6 weeks so far.  Stay tuned for more information.

There is a lot of work to be done and we have spent most of our free time doing just that. But we took a break last weekend and went out to Boston's North End, which is famous for its Italian restaurants and pastry shops. It was our anniversary!  We went to the same place a year ago. Wow - a whole year! It was crowded, a veritable zoo with not even a hint of a recession.

Some say the mob is still active here.  I don't know but I found it interesting when we encountered a street musician playing the theme from the Godfather on an accordion.

Here are some photos:

We decided to take the T (that's like the Tube).  In order to do this, one now needs something called a Charlie Card!  Who knew?  What is a Charlie Card?  How does it work?  And who was Charlie anyway?

It turns out that Charlie was a character in an old song written to protest a 5 cent fare increase on the T. In those days you paid your fare on exiting the station. Apparently he did not have enough money on him and was not allowed to get off the train.  He was forced to ride the T forever.

Finally figured it out.  Charlie card in hand.

Outside two of Boston's famous landmarks - the bridge and the "Garden".  Not too much snow down there.

Paul Revere.  The British are coming! The British are coming!  They are still here.

Street performers outside Faneuil Hall.  That blur over the people bending over is a guy somersaulting over them.  We came back later and they were still at it and doing break dancing too. I wish I had half their energy.

Faneuil Hall after dark.

A famous pastry shop.  Presidential candidates like to pop in here for photo opportunities. People were lining up out the door. We went in and while there, a guy proposed to his girlfriend by presenting her with a big cake with "Will you marry me?" written on it.  She said yes and big cheer let out from the customers.  I guess those two must really like their pastries.

Haymarket. They have a food market there and leave behind an incredible mess. There was a bulldozer just around the corner scooping it all up into a huge mountain of trash.

February 10, 2009
Don't make me use UPPERCASE!

My old Internet service provider, Bloody Verizon, sold part of their business to my new ISP, Bloody FairPoint!  In so doing, they changed my email address, giving me just 3 days' warning!  The only reason I stuck with Bloody Verizon was to avoid the grief that comes with changing an email address in about a million places.  I have wasted a lot of time on this.  Life is too short to be changing email addresses.

They messed up a lot of other people too, who have not been getting their email, and have received quite a bit flak for it in the local media.  Justifiably so.  They claimed that they didn't know the impact this change would have or how many people would be affected!  Just exactly what did they think would happen?  Do they know how many subscribers they have?  Do they know people want to get their email?

Anyway, my new email address is

I don't like the new address much.  It sounds too much like My Fair Lady.

mike stanley, michael stanley, wrexham, grove park, consultant, c#, .net, sql server